FiveThirtyEight has an interactive graphic on Gun Deaths in America. You can check it out here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/. It looks at suicides, homicides, accidental deaths, etc... throughout the US. You can filter the interactive graphic by cause, gender, age, and race. It was created by Ben Casselman, Matthew Conlen and Reuben Fischer-Baum. I found the graphic hard to navigate because it's mostly done in dots (with one dot equaling one gun death) so the dots that are colored in are compared to the ones that are not. I think it would've probably been easier for me to understand if a different method was chosen to display the information.
This one is really interesting. Thank you for sharing. I can see what you mean for the "explore the data yourself" part. I really liked how they had the bright contrasting colors in the beginning of it. I enjoy spending time tinkering around with the filters on interactive graphics like this.
Thanks for sharing, Jasmine!
I agree the graphic is a bit hard to navigate because of the dot format. I do really like the fact they allow you to explore the data for yourself, however. I also like that they explain clearly where they got the data from and provide links to the databases.
Wow. The sequenced data visualization was so powerful. It was like a one-two punch. The ability to then go through and play around with data visualization is also really powerful because I think it builds trust with the public ("see for yourself" is a powerful statement in journalism). People can also toggle around with the data and find angles that they may personally relate to which I think leaves a longer-term impact.
I actually really liked and found the dots interesting and easy to understand. Like maybe a bar chart or a pie chart of percentages could have been easier to understand, but I still thought it was rad.
The tool was very interesting considering how you can play with it's variables and get multiple, unique results. Thank you for sharing this!
I think if they had used a different background color, possibly in a frame around the dots, it would be easier to grasp. I like the use of dots because it focuses on the individuals instead of lumping them into bars or pie slices.
With that said, however, I have a few qualms about the graphic. I realize that it's difficult and often unwieldy for one graphic to do everything, but this one could give readers the wrong impression of the risk of gun deaths to various age, gender and racial groups. That's particularly true because the rate information is presented in a light-gray that makes it easy to overlook.
I also tend to want to see how gun deaths compare to other types of deaths in each category. For example, how many suicide deaths involve a gun versus deliberate overdoses, jumping, etc.
An interactive graphic that did all that would be interesting, but it also might be so overwhelming that the point of the graphic would get lost, and I can't argue with their decision to keep it simple.
One other thought spurred by this graphic is that every newspaper I've worked for has a policy of only reporting suicides if they're committed in public or as part of a murder-suicide incident or some similar factor. There are several good reasons for these policies, but I can't help but think that the result is that the public underestimates the problem that suicide poses to our society.